Minnesota well-represented in World Book Night titles

Is there anyone left who hasn't read "Wild" yet? Well, after World Book Night next spring, thousands more will get the chance. The bestselling memoir by Minnesotan Cheryl Strayed is one of the 35 titles to be handed out at random on April 23, 2014, on the third annual World Book Night USA.

Books by two other Minnesota authors — "The Lighthouse Road," by Peter Geye of Minneapolis, and "Pontoon" by Garrison Keillor, who lives in St. Paul — were also selected, as well as "The Weird Sisters," by Eleanor Brown, a graduate of Macalester College.

The full list runs the gamut from mysteries to young adult to memoir, including Agatha Christie, Malcolm Gladwell and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

World Book Night is a mostly volunteer effort to spread books and reading across the country. Every year, volunteers give away 500,000 books at random. To read the full list — and to apply to be a book-giver — go to www.us.worldbooknight.org.

Also …

• "What Happens in Hell," an essay by Charles Baxter, has been selected for inclusion in "Best American Essays 2013," edited by Cheryl Strayed. Baxter's essay originally appeared in Ploughshares.

• "Strangers in Our Midst," by Kathleen Vellenga, has been published by the new(ish) 40 Press in Anoka. Vellenga is a former Minnesota legislator, and she will sign books with other 40 Press mystery writers at 7 p.m. Nov. 13 at Once Upon a Crime and at 7 p.m. Nov. 14 at Barnes & Noble in Har Mar Mall in Roseville. Reading with her will be David Housewright, Richard A. Thompson (whose "Lowertown" is just out), Theresa Weir, Pat Dennis and E. Kelly Keady.

• "The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo," the third volume in the "Neither Wolf Nor Dog" trilogy by Kent Nerburn, will be published this month by New World Library. Nerburn, a Minnesota Book Award winner, lives in northern Minnesota. He'll read at Birchbark Books on Nov. 14 and Common Good Books on Nov. 18.